To Believe is to Achieve

Do you know the story of the little girl who caught a fever that left her both deaf and blind at the tender age of two? But did she whine or cry at the hand that
Fate had dealt her? Did she live her life in untutored misery untouched by the world? Absolutely not . She learnt sign language. She learnt Braille. She graduated from Radcliffe in 1904. She became a writer and an orator of great repute. Who am I talking about? None other than Hellen Keller. The story of her life is a thumbnail sketch of dogged determination to overcome debilitating handicaps. It is the story of a woman whose desire to achieve a goal overcame even her physical handicaps. Helen Keller made a public success of her private and personal battle with her physical ailments.This glimpse into the life of Helen Keller teaches us a lesson that one can never forget-Desire to achieve a goal can overcome all odds. This is what motivation is all about.


Often the term motivation is thought to be limited to a meaningless word in a treatise of psychology with scant practical implications. But, to my way of thinking, motivation is inextricably woven into the very fabric of our emotional and physical lives. At the risk of sounding like a self-proclaimed preacher, I would insist that success in life is in fact the practical outcome of the desire or need to achieve a goal.Motivation is the measure of any success achieved in life. Success in any endeavour in life, be it a career or be it as mundane as house hunting, requires four elementary steps :

1. Identify a goal and focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.

2. Form an Action Plan. List out the requirements for achievement of such a goal.

3. List out the tools needed for achievement of such a goal.

4. Go for it with complete enthusiasm and determination.

For instance if your goal in life was to become a teacher, this is how you would achieve it.

1. 'I-will-become-a teacher' would be the talisman you would carry around with you all the time .A constant awareness of the goal is essential to any form of achievement.

2. The next step would be to find out the requirements and qualifications to become a teacher.

3. To earn such a qualification you would have to enroll for the necessary courses. Which courses ? What universities? After you have come to a decision in this regard you would have to follow it up with admission applications and necessary financial arrangements. If you cannot afford to quit a job you would just have to find some University running evening/night classes.

4. After the procedural formalities are done you would just have to knuckle down and

Work for your goal. Whenever you are weary and discouraged focus on your goal and chant the 'mantra' of motivation 'I -can-if-I-will'
But inspite of this 'magic motivation' or 'motivation wizardry' some of us might fail at our assigned tasks . Why? This may be for several reasons:

1. We may have more than one goal . This would automatically divide the focus. To take an analogy ,it would be like running two engines with one battery and obviously we are likely to 'run out of steam' a lot faster and so fall short of achieving either goal.

2. It may be that we are ambivalent about our goals. To put it simply we are not sure if it is really worth all the effort. Such reservations at the subconscious level would make our efforts half-hearted and hence the goal unachievable.

3. It may be that the goals we set are beyond are skills or inclination .It could be as mismatched as a seamstress attempting surgery or a tone-deaf attempting to become a musician of great repute. All the motivation in the world would not help in such a case.

4. It may be that we are afraid of failure so we attempt a task at the subconscious level without adequate tools so that on failing we can find an object to blame . This is self-defeating for in doing so we are holding ourselves up for sure defeat.

5. It maybe that we are simply too lazy to make the effort required to achieve a goal.

To simply dream of making it big is not enough. We have to work to achieve success.

To use an analogy we have to sing for our supper.

6. It maybe that our motivation has flagged and let us down.

In case of failure what we need to do is check out the goal, redraw the action plan, checkout on the adequacy of tools and once again get down to the difficult task ahead with equanimity and the power of certainty of success. Success will be ours.

We have here a ready-made recipe for success. Take one cup of desire for achievement. Add a cup of dogged determination. Sprinkle it liberally with human endeavour. Bake it in the fire of human intractability and steadfastness. Let it cool in the stream of objective evaluation. Then ice it over with -- 'to believe is to achieve'.

Sweet is the taste of success.

Contributed by: Najib

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